3-D printers shaping up for California companies

If you would have uttered that phrase 30 years ago, people would have thought you were crazy. But the technology of 3-D printing is rapidly gaining traction among businesses that produce components for the medical devices industry, aerospace companies and a host of other clients.

So what, exactly, is 3-D printing?

The concept is pretty simple. It’s the process of making a three-dimensional, solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model. Working from a CAD (computer-aided design) file, the “stereolithography” process solidifies photo-curable polymer liquid plastic into precise patterns using a laser beam.

The technology uses an additive process in which successive layers of the material are laid down in different shapes to create the product.

“The real advantage is the turnaround time,” said Hiren Patel, a project and quality manager for 3D-CAM in Chatsworth. “It’s called rapid prototyping. It depends on the complexity of the part, but it’s usually just two to three days.”

That quick turnaround — also known as rapid prototyping stereolithography — gives engineers, designers, and inventors dimensionally accurate plastic parts they can hold, test and show in a matter of days, instead of the weeks or months it used to take with conventional manufacturing.

3D-CAM’s goal is to provide engineers, designers, entrepreneurs and the manufacturing community with rapid prototypes and production parts. “It could be a seat cover or a camera housing ... really anything,” Patel said. “The process can be applied to any industry. It’s very precise. There is always a tolerance down to 5 thousandths to 10 thousandths of an inch.”

3D-CAM has five or six 3-D printers which cost about $500,000 each.

“If you were to buy a new one today it would probably be about $800,000,” company owner and CEO Gary Vassighi said. “Some of the smaller ones might be about $200,000, and they even have little ones that I call toys that sell for $300 to $500. But they are crude and have no accuracy.”

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The technology is impressive, Vassighi said, but it’s also priced well beyond the reach of most consumers.

“It’s not something the average person would go out and buy,” he said. “It’s expensive and usually used for high-grade commercial purposes in areas like the military and aerospace.”

FutureFlite Inc., a Valencia, based company that makes lumbar support products for passenger seats on airlines around the world, has been a 3D-CAM customer for seven years.

“I really like working with 3D-CAM,” FutureFlite President Andy Kanigowski said in a statement posted on 3D-CAM’s website. “When we need prototypes and limited production runs for our injection molded parts, 3D-CAM is our one-stop shop.”

Kanigowski said 3D-CAM is “extremely fluent in 3-D modeling and adept at taking his company’s 2D designs and creating them with 3-D technology.

Advanced Medical Innovations, a Northridge company that designs, develops and markets products for the medical industry, is another 3D-CAM client. Company President Mike Hoftman said the technology is “phenomenal.”

“If you prepare an STL (stereolithography) file they can create a prototype within 24 hours,” he said. “Before this technology was available we used to build an aluminum prototype. That takes about three months, and if you have four different models in a product line that multiplies the cost. If you have to make changes you have to build a whole other prototype. It’s a lot of wasted time and money.”

Phil West, 3D-CAM’s tooling manager, agreed.

“A model is worth a thousand words,” he said. “When you can put something in a person’s hands they will go, ‘Oh, that’s ugly,’ or “I’m not sure if we’ll be able to fit everything in there.’ Now you can give them a sterolithography part. By spending $300 to get a part in the next day or two they are able to find out that something will or won’t work, instead of spending thousands of dollars and waiting months to find out the same thing.”

Bob Machuca, a regional manager with the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., said 3-D printing is part of the newer trend of “additive manufacturing.”

“With the old method you would chip away and chip away at something until you have all of this waste left over,” he said. “But with 3-D manufacturing you’re adding as you go along.”

Advanced Medical Innovations had 3D-CAM create a prototype for their Sharp Safety Station, a plastic box that is used to dispose of sharp instruments used during surgery, such as needles and scalpel blades. The container is equipped with three safety hinges, overlapping walls, a secure snap closure and a magnetic surface that keeps blades and needles safely inside the unit.

Other 3-D printing applications are not nearly so lofty.

Street Surfing, an Irvine-based maker of skateboards and casterboards, turned to 3D-CAM to create a skateboard prototype in three days. The company offered its own testimonial on 3D-CAM’s website. Geoff McKee, Street Surfing’s vice president of product development, admitted it was “an almost impossible request.”

“Sure, it was a ridiculous deadline,” McKee said. “But ‘ready, fire, aim’ is the nature of our industry. When we told 3D-CAM we needed a painted and finished skateboard prototype with an ultra tight turnaround, they said ‘Sure.’”

3D-CAM beat the deadline, producing the prototype in just 2 ½ days. Working from CAD files, they began at noon on a Saturday and created a prototype of the deck and wheels over the weekend. The product was prepped and painted Monday afternoon and the parts were shipped to Street Surfing’s office early Tuesday for final assembly and then placed in a mockup retail box.

“The whole project came off without a hitch, and in fact it was on a plane to New York for review on Wednesday, where we showed it to our customer who loved it,” McKee said.

Precision Coil Spring, an El Monte company that makes springs that are used in airplanes, medical devices and nuclear equipment, also uses computer-generated 3-D technology, which allows the company to make products to exacting specifications.

“It’s extremely amazing that we have this technology in little corners like El Monte or Northridge,” said Don Adkins, Precision Coil’s vice president of sales. “I travel a lot and I don’t seen this technology clustered anywhere else like it is here. It’s leading the world and sometimes I think we forget how advanced we are.”

There’s more to come, according to Machuca.

“I’ve even heard some people talking about 4-D printers,” he said. “With 4-D you make something and then you can change its shape by dipping it in water. It could be used for military purposes where someone could make it real small to fit in a backpack and then dip it into a solution and turn it into a tent or some other kind of device.”